As far as the ball not bouncing left… That might have just been the way he happened to be gripping and releasing the ball.

Good points. It’s why you see I wrote things like “at least in the small sampling” and “one would expect, in the long term.”

My point was simply that one shouldn’t attempt to teach a valuable life lesson with only 10 samples, and not use “most of the time” as a measure of success when in the long run one could only expect 1 in 4 guesses to be correct.

I was actually quite interested, however, in the fact that in the first set of data presented the ball never went “left.” Yes, there are tons of explanations for that, from the spin of the hand to the slope of the floor. It just seems to be a far more interesting question “why did it not go left?” And actually, if we move the odds to 1 in 3 of guessing it correctly, we find a much closer match (33 1/3 % compared to 40%)

Hey, this is a blog, not a peer reviewed statistical journal.

That Blake was right 40% of the time rather than 25%, is inconsequential. Played out, he could have spans that he was right 100% of the time, but over the course of a thousand tries (rather than 10) he would most likely be on the 25% mark.
Beating the odds by 15%, on a test of 10 trials, does little to establish a base line - it showed that he wasn’t right ‘most of the time’ as he had believed. He could have been 100% accurate on one trial, and it wouldn’t have been a significant predictor of ‘ability’ or future success.

That any of us exist means a single sperm had to beat odds of one in several million. As Bill Bryson said in A Short History Of Nearly Everything - ‘we are all lottery winners’.

Cold reading: He also knows that for every several claims he makes about you that you reject as being inaccurate, he will make one that meets with your approval; and he knows that you are likely to remember the hits he makes and forget the misses.
…

Shermer’s books are really interesting. I especially liked his book Why People Believe Weird Things.

Given that there were 4 possible outcomes, and you measured in a binomial fashion (”right” or “wrong”) one would expect, in the long term, that his correctness would be 25%. That is, there is a 1 in 4 chance of getting it “right” and a 3 in 4 chance of being wrong.

Your son, at least in the small sampling “Beat the odds.” Good on him!

Steve

My friend has needed a car badly for a while now - just two days after he put a down payment on one, another car was offered to him for free. Since the deposit is non-refundable (and he’s nearly broke), he’s beat himself up over it - feeling he ’should have known’, even citing that his sister-in-law had a dream that predicted the second car.
Frustrating - yes. Against reasonable odds - thus ‘unlucky’ - yes. But a product of personal failure? NO!

How wonderful that you managed to introduce the subject to Blake, especially after noticing a tendency to feel he can control things outside of his control.

Positive attitude and confidence does indeed tend to bend things our way - because that behavior is appealing to others and holds back our own discouragement. There is no loss in the world at this realization. You gain unpolluted expectations - and save yourself suffering when things don’t go your way.

Another friend of mine is dying in the hospital - she is 55, and it came as a surprise to everyone who knows her. There is little that can be done, we are informed by her family, except they are asking for prayer. The people who are praying for her have described their feelings about it - saying how unfair it is that my friend should die. One has told me how much this has ’shaken her faith’ because our friend is such a good person. When reality encroaches on people with a supernatural worldview - they suffer more greatly because they feel betrayed by their magic.
How much less suffering would be in the world if people were less likely to attribute supernatural causes, and spent their time learning how things really work?

Also, excellent illustration of hits and misses as it relates to psychics. No matter how I try to explain that to friends who want to believe, they still persist in wanting to believe. Which is what the psychics count on, of course.